by Sharon Pape
“You deserve some time off, Kailyn. Don’t you ever take a vacation?”
“Since my mother and grandmother died, I’m my whole staff. Unlike you, I don’t get paid vacation time. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. Too bad I can’t just wiggle my nose and sneeze up a clone,” I added, hoping he’d take my words as the olive branch I meant them to be.
Travis smiled and gave me a wink that was as good as a thank-you. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
I swear I could hear the sound of a barrier between us shattering.
* * * *
The next morning, I went through the connecting door between my shop and Tilly’s. My aunt was singing “Eleanor Rigby” at the top of her lungs while she dusted her tearoom. Although she had numerous talents, singing wasn’t one of them. She couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket as Bronwen used to say, and the high, squeaky register of her voice made small animals burrow into the ground seeking refuge. Merlin was either more tolerant or blissfully going deaf.
Although Tilly’s voice was an assault on the ears, the aroma of her baking was a fair enough trade-off. That day the air was so dense with the scent of warm apples, sugar and cinnamon, it could have formed into clouds and rained the heavenly mixture.
“Where is Merlin the Magnificent?” I asked after wishing her a good morning.
“Guarding the oven,” Tilly said. “He can sit there peering into the window like it’s the television.” She glanced at her watch. “You’re in early today. Something up?”
“Travis and I have an opportunity to interview Hugh Fletcher. But it means driving down to Manhattan and being away overnight. Do you think—”
“Yes” she said, interrupting me, “I believe I’m available to cat- and shop-sit if that’s what you’re leading up to. Let me check.” She set down the feather duster and went to look at her appointment book. “No one until the tour on Saturday.” She looked up at me. “I’m free to tend your shop, and I’ll bring Sashkatu along with me. Would he do better in your house overnight or in mine?”
I had to think about that. He was used to my bed since he’d slept there with Morgana from the time he was little. On the other hand, he might enjoy a sleepover that involved Merlin. On yet another hand, Sashki and Isenbale, Tilly’s big Maine Coon, had never liked each other. I didn’t want to return and find my aunt looking like a battlefield of scratches from having to separate them. Merlin might be able to make peace between the felines, but they might fight over him as well.
“He’ll be happier in my house,” I said finally. Or at least I’d be happier not having to worry about it.
“It’s settled then. It’ll be good for you to get away. You’re too young to be spending all your time working and tending cats. Morgana and Bronwen have been concerned about you too.”
“So the three of you get together to talk about me? A secret cabal—who could have imagined?” I said and laughed. “Maybe I’m the one who should be worried.”
“I’ll expect a detailed account of the interview,” Tilly said, neatly changing the subject.
“From what I’ve read, Hugh Fletcher is practically a recluse. He guards his privacy like a piranha. I wish I were going with you. I wouldn’t mind being a fly on that wall.” A timer rang in the kitchen, followed closely by Merlin bellowing that the pie was done.
Chapter 15
My eyes blinked open at 2 a.m., which is when it dawned on me that I had no idea where Travis and I would be staying overnight. I’d been focused on the shop and my cats to the exclusion of everything else. Travis must have booked a hotel or a motel, I told myself. He was always on the road; surely he wouldn’t have forgotten such an important detail. In fact, he was probably wondering why I hadn’t brought it up. Maybe he thought I expected him to pay for me as well as for him. I had to make it clear I preferred to pay my own way. I wasn’t a charity case or a gold digger. I sat up abruptly, dislodging a couple irritated cats in the process. I was reaching for the phone when I remembered it was too late to call him. If I did, he’d be within his rights to add clueless to my already off-putting résumé.
I don’t know what time I finally fell back to sleep, but the alarm I’d set for seven o’clock woke me. I was groggy and anxious about getting the arrangements worked out with Travis. I didn’t want to sound neurotic, though, so I forced myself to wait until eight to call him.
“Hi there,” he said, sounding as though he’d slept well and without a care in the world.
I dove right in. “Hi. You must be wondering why I didn’t ask about our accommodations for tonight, and I wanted to let you to know that I intend to pay for myself.” I immediately wished I could have a do-over, so I could slow down and speak with some composure.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I wouldn’t know what to charge you.” There was no mistaking the amusement in his voice.
“Excuse me?”
“I have an apartment in Brooklyn. It’s a small one bedroom, but it should do us for the night.”
Given the current state of our relationship, if he expected me to sleep with him, he was sadly mistaken. “No, no,” I said. “I don’t want to put you out of your bed.” That should get my point across.
“It’s no big deal. I do it whenever women stay over.”
That was hardly the response I’d expected. Words failed me.
Travis laughed. “Relax, I’m talking about my mother and sister. When they’re in town I always give them the bedroom, and I bunk on the sleeper sofa in the living room.”
“Oh, good,” I said, “because I’m not interested in joining a harem.”
“That’s a pity; I hear there’s a lot to be said for them.”
* * * *
Tilly came by at eight thirty in the morning to take Sashkatu with her to open my shop. When I plucked him off the top of the couch and placed him in Tilly’s arms, he looked from her to me with questions he didn’t know how to ask. Not for the first time, I wished I could explain things to him and the other cats. I gave him a reassuring smile. See, everything is normal and fine. He narrowed his eyes as if to say, “I’ll be the judge of that.”
He’d never been fond of car rides, but that was rarely a problem for me. Walking from my front door to the back door of my shop took less time than getting in the car and driving around the corner to it. But walking can often be so difficult for Tilly that she preferred to always have her car at her disposal. I walked out to Tilly’s car with them, anticipating a rebellion. Sure enough, when she tried to put him into her car, he took a stand. A mêlée ensued, with feline and human limbs flying in all directions. It was by no means a foregone conclusion that Tilly and I would prevail. I stopped it before anyone could be injured, but there were still enough bad feelings to go around. In the end, I walked Sashkatu into the shop while Tilly drove herself there. She called me fifteen minutes later to report that after I left, Sashki made his way onto his windowsill and promptly fell asleep. I was as relieved as a mother whose three-year-old was finally adjusting to preschool.
* * * *
Travis pulled into my driveway at exactly ten o’clock. He tossed my overnight case into the trunk beside his. Seeing the two bags bumped up against each other was a strangely intimate sight. It spoke of shared vacations and joined lives. I chided myself for letting my imagination run away with me. Bronwen always said I had too fanciful a bent, but neither she nor my mother could teach me how to rein it in.
The five-hour drive passed quickly since we were never at a loss for conversation, one of the benefits of a still-new relationship. I leaned on the normal parts of my history and skimmed over the parts that involved magick and therefore marked me as different in his eyes. I knew it wasn’t the smartest way to proceed if I expected him to take me as I am. But for these two days I wanted Travis to look at me as he had before I’d shown him the kind of magick he couldn’t ignore or explain away.
“Excuse the mess,” Travis said, kicking a pair of Nikes out of our way. “I meant to straighten up for you, but I was stuck in the Glen chasing down a story.”
“It’s fine. I assumed this is how single men live.” At least they had back in college and in TV sitcoms.
“Good, then you won’t judge me too harshly. But in spite of the way it looks, I can promise you it’s clean. My mother insists on sending her cleaning lady, Hilda the Hun, here every Friday.
“You don’t sound properly grateful,” I said and laughed at the image of him doing battle with a female Attila.
“Well, it was touch and go for a couple of months until Hilda and I worked out a détente. As long as she doesn’t touch my papers or try to rearrange my stuff, she can sanitize to her heart’s content.”
“I think I’d like your mom and Hilda.”
“I’m sure they’d like you...too.” His words ran out of steam when he no doubt remembered that I’m more than meets the eye. “Let’s get you installed in the bedroom,” he said, compensating with too much enthusiasm.
Once I’d had a chance to wash and pull a comb through my hair, Travis took me on a walking tour of his neighborhood, ending at his favorite “pizza joint.” “What passes for pizza in your neck of the woods can’t rightly be compared to these culinary works of art,” he said.
I tried to defend New Camel’s reputation, but after one crisp, oozing bite, I became a convert. “Now you’ve ruined me for pizza anywhere else,” I lamented on our way back to his apartment.
“Here are a couple of tips to remember: a pizza joint should never be named O’Leary’s, and it should never offer a topping of Spam.”
* * * *
We were ushered into Hugh Fletcher’s inner sanctum at precisely 9 a.m., after spending fifteen minutes in the reception area under the scrutiny of his secretary, Ms. Robbins.She looked like she’d been purchased along with the rest of the high-end décor. She was sleek and polished in a dove-gray suit that had clearly been tailored to her precise measurements. Her blond hair was swept up in a lacquered French twist, her eyes a shade of green I’d only seen in Persian cats and ads for contact lenses. And her mouth seemed permanently curved into the barest of smiles, as if she knew things beyond our ken and was merely tolerating riffraff like us.
By comparison, Fletcher proved to be warm and gracious, not at all the man I expected from his bio, Ingersoll’s words, or his sumptuous surroundings. Travis’s expression told me he was experiencing the same sense of whiplash. Was this slightly paunchy, fifty-something with a balding pate the real Hugh Fletcher, or had he stuck us with an underling?
He came around his desk to greet us, dismissing Ms. Robbins with a nod. “Please, make yourselves comfortable,” he said, gesturing to the armchairs in front of the desk. He didn’t speak again until he resumed his seat. “I understand you’re here to interview me and learn about my meteoric rise to greatness,” he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I usually let my nephew, Rebel, handle this kind of thing. He leaned across his desk to whisper, “Rebel. What’s with the crazy names these days? Eh”—he shook his head and sat up straight—”my sister’s always been a little out there, if you know what I mean. But I digress.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” Travis said, “why did you agree to talk to us?”
Fletcher shrugged. “You know, I’m not entirely certain. I haven’t done an interview in a long time, so maybe I needed to take a break from big business for an hour.” He laughed. “Or maybe the universe whispered your name in my ear. Do you believe in that stuff? My sister believes in a lot of that bologna. She never gets tired of trying to expand my mind. I ask you,” he said, looking from Travis to me, “do I look like someone who needs advice on how to live? I’d say I’m doing just fine,” he answered himself. “So, you’ve got questions. Let’s give this thing a whirl.”
If Fletcher’s goal was to throw us off balance, he’d done an admirable job. I was glad that Travis was the point man and that I was the lowly intern.
I listened closely to his questions and more closely to his answers. I watched the older man’s body language, trying to catch any tells. Travis took him from his childhood through his college years to his first small-business venture. Like most successful people, Fletcher clearly enjoyed talking about himself. He went off on tangents, provided amusing anecdotes; in short, he was the perfect subject. But the more he talked, the less I was taken with him.
He was too perfect a subject. I couldn’t tell if Travis had come to the same conclusion, but he was far too astute to have missed it. Something Fletcher had said earlier came to mind: “Maybe I needed to take a break from big business for an hour.” He was using up the hour with his rambling answers, his good-ol’-boy demeanor. Maybe it wasn’t the universe that had whispered Travis’s name in his ear. Maybe it was one of his minions advising a goodwill gesture, because there were inklings, rumors of rumors that his name was being raised in connection to Amanda’s death.
I looked at my watch. We were never going to find out anything of import unless Travis switched tracks on the runaway train that was Hugh Fletcher. But he couldn’t very well interrupt the man mid-story. That’s when I saw the fly. It was perched on the wall closest to Fletcher’s desk. No, it couldn’t possibly be...could it? Had Tilly convinced Merlin to turn her into a fly so she actually could tag along for the interview? I found myself staring at the insect, searching for a telltale bit of muumuu that might have survived the metamorphosis.
“Kailyn?” Travis said. He was looking at me, his brow furrowed.
“Is something wrong, Ms. Wilde?” Fletcher asked.
“Sorry, I just...I don’t like flies,” I said with a phony shiver of repulsion.
Before I knew what was happening, Fletcher had pulled a fly swatter from a desk drawer and was on his feet.
“No, don’t kill it,” I yelled as he got ready to wield the swatter. “Please,” I added, remembering belatedly that I was a guest in his office. “I don’t want any creature killed on my behalf.”
“Would you prefer I offered it a drink?” he asked dryly.
“I’m sorry. Please just let it be. It probably flew in with us. Maybe it will follow us out when we leave.” If he took one more step in the fly’s direction, I was prepared to jump out of my chair and take him down.
Fletcher shook his head. “You’d get along great with my sister,” he said, taking his seat again. “Now, where were we?”
Whoever the fly was, it had served to interrupt the interview long enough for me to hijack the conversation and redirect it. “I noticed that Winterland is undergoing a major renovation,” I said. “I’ll be interested in how it turns out.”
“You’re an aficionado of winter sports?” Fletcher asked.
“I’m thinking of taking up skiing. In fact I discussed it with Mr. Ingersoll recently.”
“Eric’s a fine instructor. You won’t find better five hundred miles in any direction.”
“He’s a busy man too. He told me he’s been interim manager since the last manager walked out.” From the corner of my eye I could see that Travis was trying to catch my attention. His eyebrows were working overtime like Groucho Marx in the old movies he loved. I pretended not to notice. One of us had to make waves, or we’d never lure the real Hugh Fletcher out of hiding. “Why on earth would anyone walk away from such a good job?” I mused aloud.
“Well, if you run into him, you can ask him for me. One day everything was fine and dandy, and the next he was gone. No notice, no reason. You give someone a chance to improve their
lot, and that’s the thanks you get,” Fletcher said with blatant disgust.
Ingersoll had told me the same story about Davies’ disappearance. Either they were both telling the truth or Ingersoll was parroting the party line.
Travis had finally figured out where I was going with the subject and dropped the Groucho routine. “Does human resources have an emergency contact number for him?” he asked, getting into the game.
“No,” he replied, the word clipped and testy. “And I don’t see how this is any of your business.”
Travis didn’t respond. As a journalist, maybe he was trying not to burn his bridges. I harbored no such concern. I had to get what I could out of Fletcher because I was never going to get another opportunity. “It’s possible he was injured and lost his memory,” I said, picking up the standard.
“I’ll consider that right after I go back to believing in Santa and the Tooth Fairy,” Fletcher said, a sneer tugging at his upper lip.
I was at a crossroads. I’d originally intended to ask him how he felt about the Waverly proposal and if he was worried about the competition. But something told me he’d be well prepared to answer such an obvious question. I decided to go with Robert Frost down the road less traveled. “It’s so much easier to locate people these days,” I said. “I’d be happy to see what I can find out for you about your missing manager.”
Fletcher smoothed back the nonexistent hair on top of his head. “Very generous of you, Ms. Wilde, but I don’t need your help. Locating him isn’t important. People don’t get second chances around here.” He made a point of checking his watch and turned his gaze on Travis. “I have a meeting in a couple minutes, Anderson, do you have a last question to wrap this up?”
“If I may, sir. Where do you see yourself in ten years, both personally and professionally?”
Serving a life sentence for taking out a hit on Amanda, I hoped.